Buying More and Paying Less

Cyber Monday Points Up New Trend in Buying Patterns

 By Karen Talley 
 November 30, 2012, 10:38 a.m. ET

    In Karen Talley's Wall Street Journal article titled, "Cyber Monday Points Up New Trend in Buying Patterns" the topic of holiday discount is discussed. With an astounding 1.46 Billion dollars spent on Cyber Monday, retailers can walk away satisfied with their business profits. The high revenues are a result of a change in business dynamics for most companies for the holiday season. The concept is for consumer to participate in buy more and spend less expenditures. The more items for less money has caused a margin consternation for customers, which has led them to spread out their purchases. 

   In order to follow this growing holiday trend, "Retailers discounted more," said Jay Henderson, strategy director for the Smarter Commerce arm of IBM. "They knew there were savvy shoppers online looking for deals. They were enticing customers to put more merchandise in their cart, but even with that additional merchandise, the average order volume fell."

   As a result, companies such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target saw significant gains from their Cyber Monday discounts. 

   Conclusively, the 17% gain for online spending compared to Cyber Monday of 2011 is reflective of companies abilities to provide customers with discounts and sales at various pricing points. 


In my opinion, I think that the buy more and spend less idea is genius. I personally know that when I go shopping, I would prefer to spend 100 dollars on five items, rather than 100 dollars on one item. The concept of spreading my money over several purchases makes the items seem more worth while. Also, it makes me believe that I am not spending as much, even though $100 dollars on five items is the same amount as $100 on one. 

Although, I do not believe that my thoughts reflect the U.S. consumer population, I do think that these same believes among other shoppers could be a reason that companies are thriving in this environment.


Topic: Holiday Discounts

WSJ Article